Kevin Williams of Hurtwood delivered a presentation at one of Vilnis Vesma’s energy CPD workshops. The presentation looked at the growing problem of BMS obsolescence. This arose out of the reduction in the number of suppliers and the disappearance of many unique BMS’s. Many of the the attendees had the Satchwell BAS rack mounted controls which have recently been discontinued. The delegates voiced their frustrations with ageing systems which had become too extensive to replace. Kevin played a short video of a pan pipe playing llama to illustrate the lack of innovation in the BMS industry. Delegates discussed how fix on failure was still the prevalent maintenance technique.
Kevin described how BMS’s are moving to open platforms. He outlined a vision of a large number of suppliers competitively developing new software for BMSs, in the same way as apps are developed for smartphones. Hurtwood and many others are using modern and open BMS systems to gather far more data than previous systems. This would allow condition based maintenance and more reliable services. Hurtwood have already developed conversion software for the Satchwell BAS system to the Niagara platform. Software such as this will significantly reduce the costs of BMS upgrades.
Finally, Kevin described how analytics and eventually, Artificial Intelligence within BMSs will significantly improve the energy performance and services management. Analytics identifies poor control much more cost effectively than humans can. AI tunes the control strategy for an item of plant to achieve the optimum energy performance.
Kevin provided many of the delegates with food for thought. They left with an exciting taste of the benefits that BMS could bring in the future. No doubt, the appetites of many for a far more effective BMS were whetted.